La Jolla Music Society SummerFest 2012

Erik Ralske and Benjamin Jaber are used to working without a net. As principal French horns of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and the San Diego Symphony, respectively, they routinely perform the seemingly impossible high-wire antics symphonic composers demand of this challenging instrument.

But at SummerFest Friday, Ralske, the old hand, and Jaber, the young gun, were particularly at risk in Beethoven’s Sextet in E-flat Major for Two Horns and String Quartet.

Perhaps Beethoven made a bar bet with his French horn buddies that they couldn’t possibility play this piece. He writes repeated rapid passages that reach the extremes of the instrument, but he also presents extended, sustained melodic lines. And unlike most symphonic works, where the horns are given long stretches of much needed rest, in Beethoven’s sextet they are in the mix in nearly every measure of this rarely performed piece, starting with measure one.

All the while, the duo has to make it sound effortless, as this work shows Beethoven at his most convivial. There’s no struggle between darkness and light; it’s let the sun shine, from beginning to end.

Ralske and Jaber, however, would have won this bet. And perhaps SummerFest music director Cho-Liang Lin should buy the beer, with a round for the alert, energetic, completely engaged ensemble of violinists Michelle Kim and Arianna Warsaw-Fan, violist James Dunham and cellist Carter Brey.

It was a delight hearing this matched pair negotiate the work’s twists and turns, particularly passages like the opening of the third movement, where Jaber starts with an arpeggiated cascade of notes, heading toward the bottom of his instrument while Ralske aimed for the top.

Indeed, this performance was emblematic of the best aspects of SummerFest. A group of strangers who cross generational, ethnic and gender lines, who likely will never perform together again, playing repertoire they’ve rarely if ever seen, not only find common ground, they light a fire. It gives you hope for humankind.

As for the balance of the all-Beethoven program, a determined Lin joined Kim, Durham and cellist Toby Hoffman in a forceful (and sometimes forced) interpretation of the String Quintet in C Major; the Newbury Trio (Warsaw-Fan, cellist Meta Weiss and pianist Henry Kramer) offered a proficient reading of the Piano Trio in G Major, and pianist John Novacek, oboist Liang Wang, clarinetist Burt Hara, bassoonist Valentin Martchev and Ralske presented a professional if superficial rendering of the Quintet for Piano and Winds in E-flat Major.